


Discovery

by ozuttly



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Emiya is big bro to all, Gen, Gender Issues, Mordred learns some things, Some internalized transphobia, Trans Male Character, pronouns change mid fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24949927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozuttly/pseuds/ozuttly
Summary: Mordred and Emiya have a chat in the simulator, which Mordred is pretty sure is not being used correctly.
Relationships: Heroic Spirit EMIYA | Archer & Mordred | Saber of Red
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	Discovery

Mordred is restless a lot. She has been since she was summoned, has been her entire life. She’s never ever been good at sitting still, or being patient, or any of the things that the good women in her father’s court prided themselves on.

She trains a lot to make up for it. She uses the simulator more than any other servant, constantly moving her body to make up for the fact that she feels /off/, like her skin doesn’t fit right and there’s nothing she can do to fix it. The energy that crackles in her muscles feels like fire, frustration burning just below the surface until she gets it out by attacking something, breaking something, /doing/ something.

So she goes to the simulator every day, almost all day, and she fights. It takes the edge off a little, and it exhausts her enough that she can sleep. It’s the only way she’s able to relax, if only a little, and has been even since before she became a servant.

Except today somebody is already using the simulator, and not to fight or train the way they’re supposed to.

Emiya is doing laundry, wearing only a pair of jeans with no shirt.

“The fuck is this?” Mordred asks, always sharp and foul tongued. She’s tried being ladylike before, moments alone in the mirror when she was trying to figure out exactly what was /wrong/ with her, and how she could fix it. But it always feels weird and bad, and not at all like her, so she settles into her rude and grumpy persona instead. Emiya glances back at her, where she’s standing on the porch of an old japanese mansion, his shirt on the rail of the steps beside her.

He’s hanging sheets on a laundry line. The sun is beating down above them, and there’s birdsong in the air. If she looks out past the yard they’re in, she can see what she vaguely recognizes as Fuyuki stretching out past them. It’s weird, seeing a Fuyuki that isn’t covered in fire. Right now it almost looks normal, and she wonders if this place means anything to Emiya, for him to conjure it up like this. 

He pins the sheet in place on the line before he turns his attention back to her, and she’s practically fuming at being ignored. She considers kicking over his laundry basket as revenge, but he has a class advantage over her, and she doesn’t really want to eat swords. 

“The sheets feel different when you hang them to dry in the sun,” he explains, and Mordred wrinkles her brow at him. The sun here is fake, so would it really make a difference? Besides that, the dryer in the laundry room is faster. It isn’t a servant’s job to do laundry either, though many of them help out of the goodness of their hearts. Mordred is not one of them. 

“Great, cool, I wanna fight,” she says bluntly, and Emiya squints at her. The look he’s giving her isn’t quite patronizing, but it’s close enough, and she growls at him in an effort to get him to back off. Emiya is the worrywart type, isn’t he? Like a parent, somebody who takes care of others. She remembers her father vaguely speaking of him from the past, in a holy grail war the two had shared together. 

Never to her, though. Her father didn’t think she was worth the time. 

“I’m almost done, just give me a few hours,” Emiya says, and Mordred scoffs. A few hours to dry some sheets that they could just toss in the dryer. It’s stupid, and she hates it. She hates waiting, and she has nothing to do in the mean time. If she went back to her room she’d just spend the time pacing, and she doesn’t want to do that. So she flops down on the veranda with a loud groan, and watches Emiya work. 

For his part, he rolls his eyes and ignores her, though she thinks he enjoys having somebody around. Emiya is one of those servants who is rarely alone, always hanging around with someone or other. Master, one of the many Cu Chulainns, her father, Medusa, Ishtar, Parvati, even Jaguar Warrior. They’re always attached to him, and Mordred doesn’t really get it. But he doesn’t push them away, as much as she thinks it would be annoying. Maybe, despite appearances, Emiya’s the type of guy who hates being alone.

She scrutinizes him as he works, trying to figure him out. It’s rare that she sees him so unguarded, and she wants to take a closer look.

His hair is unstyled, damp with sweat from the heat of the sun. He looks like he’s enjoying himself, doing housework, and Mordred’s eyes trail lower. His muscles are pretty good, but there’s something she doesn’t really get. 

Two scars, just under his pecs, one on either side. She scrunches up her nose as she looks at them, then sits up so she can see better. 

It isn’t completely unusual for servants to keep scars they had in their life, but the scars usually have some kind of significance, don’t they? Or something like that. Emiya doesn’t have a legend, though, so maybe his scars are just ordinary. But there’s two of them, perfectly symmetrical, and it bothers her a little. So she does the first thing she thinks of, and she asks. 

“Something got you good, huh?” She says, and Emiya raises his eyebrows at her, like he doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. She nods towards his chest, and he looks down. Some kind of emotion passes over his face that she can’t quite decipher, and then he huffs out a short laugh. Like her comment was amusing. It irks her. 

“Those aren’t battle scars,” he says, and Mordred scrunches up her nose. If they aren’t battle scars, what are they? Weird birthmarks? Tattoos? She kicks her feet over the edge of the veranda and leans forward. He looks like he’s going to ignore her, but the longer she stares at him the more uncomfortable he seems to get. Finally he looks back at her, seeming annoyed and thoroughly unimpressed, and she grins proudly. She’s always been good at getting on peoples’ nerves. 

“They’re surgical scars,” he explains. Mordred tilts her head to the side curiously. 

“Like when you get your appendix removed?” she asks, and Emiya rolls his eyes again. She feels like he’s making fun of her, and she growls at him. It isn’t her fault she doesn’t know what kind of surgery he had. Surgery was hardly even a thing back in her time, and while the grail augmented information, it didn’t do so with /everything/. 

“Top surgery,” he says instead, and Mordred gives him a blank look. He’s starting to look more irritated now. She has no idea why. She genuinely doesn’t know what he means. She thinks about it, searching through the false memories the grail gifted her with to see if she knows anything. When she finds the piece of information she’s looking for, her eyebrows shoot up. 

“Wait, you had tits?” She asks, half-way excited and half-way astonished. Well, he still had them, really. His chest was well defined and muscular, and Cu Chulainn had made more than one lewd remark about it in the cafeteria. Mordred looks at them now with new fascination, and Emiya scowls at her. 

“Eyes up here,” he says, but she ignores him. She hops off the veranda and walks over, looking up close at the scars on his chest. He puts one hand on her forehead and pushes her away when she gets too close, and she whines about it, but doesn’t push his boundaries. 

“Why would you have tits though,” she says, because she doesn’t quite get it. Did guys have tits? Top surgery was usually delegated for… trans men, wasn’t it? Her eyes go wide and her jaw drops. “Wait, you used to be a chick? No way!”

Emiya does not look impressed with her, but Mordred has never been good at tact. 

“/No/. I’m a man and I’ve always been a man,” he informs her sternly. He looks ready to take the piss out of her, so she backs up a bit, just in case he starts swinging or something. She wouldn’t be adverse to a fistfight, but she’s far more interested in the subject at hand. 

“But you had tits,” Mordred reiterates, and Emiya outright glares at her. 

“/Yes/, I had tits,” he grumbles, and Mordred continues to stare at him wide-eyed, like she’s never seen him before. He shifts under her gaze, then turns around to continue with his laundry. 

He says it so easily, as if it isn’t even a big deal. Mordred looks down at her own chest, cupping her breasts in her hands and squeezing them. They’re nothing outrageous, not like Raikou or Passionlip, but she’s always found them to be a pain. They get in the way, and she imagines herself without them. 

She’s done that before, off-hand, usually after a shower when she has to come face to face with them in the mirror. She doesn’t hate her body, and she’s… reasonably comfortable in her own skin, she thinks. She looks up and Emiya is giving her a weird look. She decides to ignore it. 

“Hey, how big were your tits?” she asks, and he snorts. 

“Do you just say the first thing that comes to mind?” he asks derisively, and Mordred shrugs. 

“Yeah, most of the time. How big were they? Were you like Raikou? Like triple f cups or something? Did it hurt when they cut ‘em off? Is that still a thing that they do?” She asks a million questions, and she doesn’t actually expect him to answer her. She knows she’s being invasive, but she is actually curious. He’s silent for a long moment, then side-eyes her, and she thinks that maybe he’s curious too.

“It takes a while to recover, normally,” he says with a little shrug. “I had a mage surgeon. She healed it all up a lot quicker, so it wasn’t as bad.” 

Mordred is surprised, but intrigued. Of course magecraft would make surgery easier. Emiya turns back to his laundry, and pins another sheet in place. 

“I’m sure if you asked Da Vinci, she could figure something out for you,” he adds, and Mordred’s back goes rimrod straight. “Or Scathach. She can do a lot of weird things with Runes, or so I’ve heard.” 

Mordred’s mouth goes dry, and she thinks about it for all of a second before shaking her head. 

“I never said I wanted to do it,” she says defensively. She doesn’t hate her body, and she doesn’t hate herself. She wouldn’t ever need to do something like that. “Why would you think I wanted it?” 

Emiya doesn’t answer for a second before he just shrugs. 

“You seemed curious, that’s all,” he says. Mordred relaxes ever so slightly, but she doesn’t lay down again. She feels nervous energy just under her skin, and she wants to get it out. Right now she wishes she were training, and she considers tearing down all of Emiya’s sheets so she can use the simulator properly. 

“How do you decide you’re not a girl?” she asks instead, and is surprised a bit by her frankness. She’s always hated being referred to as a woman, but that’s because she doesn’t want to be seen as weak. But women aren’t weak, really. There are many skilled warriors here who are women, and she licks her lips. They’re not like her, though. 

Emiya has stopped hanging his laundry, and he turns to look at her. He looks speculative more than anything. She’s surprised he hasn’t gotten mad at her yet, when she’s asking so many invasive questions. Most people would get mad, wouldn’t they? But Emiya just seems… patient. It’s weird. 

“It’s different for everyone,” he says finally, and Mordred groans, because that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. Emiya smirks, then walks over to sit beside her. He’s taller than her, and he stretches his legs out as he sits on the veranda. “For me, I just didn’t feel like it fit. Like being a woman was a role I wasn’t meant to play, is all.” 

Mordred wants to know more, but for once she doesn’t know how to ask. She opens her mouth and closes it a few times, and Emiya looks up as a butterfly drifts through the air above them. 

“When did you know?” She asks next, and Emiya shrugs. 

“Middle school, I think? There was a girl who looked after me, and she helped me figure it out. She was trans too. More people are than you think,” he says, and it feels like the words are heavy, somehow. They sink deep into Mordred’s gut, and she places her hand on her chest. 

She’s never hated her body. 

But she can’t say she’s always loved it, either. 

“Could you,” she begins, then stops. She doesn’t know what she wants to ask, and she chews on her lower lip. Being all meek and shit isn’t like her, and she hates it. But for some reason it’s hard to ask, and she has to take a deep breath to prepare herself. 

“Sometimes it’s easier to figure it out if you try it on,” he suggests, and she blinks owlishly up at him. “If you have someone treat you like a guy, call you a guy, that sort of thing.” 

He shrugs his shoulders like he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. Mordred looks up at him, but it takes a while to see the invitation there. 

“Or even if you just tell it to yourself, it might click.”

Mordred’s fingers curl against their chest, and they leave crescent-moon marks against their skin above their top. 

“I’m a guy?” they say, almost like a question. Emiya rolls his eyes, but not in an unfond way. Mordred looks at him for reassurance, but already they feel it. 

Like something has clicked. 

“I’m a guy,” he says again, almost breathless, and it feels like his head is spinning. He jumps to his feet, all the pent up energy inside of him burning up at once. He leaps into the air and spins around. 

“I’m a GUY!” he yells, as loud as he can. Emiya laughs, but he doesn’t roll his eyes again. Mordred isn’t sure what the look is on his face. Pride, or happiness, or what. He doesn’t really need to know. He just jumps up in the air again, spinning backwards and laughing out loud, until he snags himself on Emiya’s clothesline. 

“The laundry!” Emiya yelps as he leaps to his feet, but Mordred is still laughing as the whole thing falls to the ground, the sheets getting covered in grass and mud. He rolls around for a second, and Emiya definitely looks unimpressed, his hands on his hips. Now Mordred knows what Master means when they say he’s like a mom.

“I’m a guy,” he says again, and Emiya snorts. 

“You’re a pain,” he says as he picks up the sheets to pile them back in the basket and rewash them. Mordred grins from ear to ear, because that is something he’s more than used to hearing. 

“That too,” he agrees. “But I’m a pain who is also a /guy/. God I never knew you could just be a guy. That’s so weird.” 

Emiya huffs at him. 

“It’s not weird,” he says, then pauses. “You just think it’s weird because everyone around you says it’s weird.” 

Mordred squints at him as Emiya grabs the sheet he’s laying on and tugs, sending him rolling to the ground in a gaggle of limbs. He doesn’t even have it in him to be mad, though. He untangles himself and sits up, resting his weight on his elbows as he looks up at the sun.

It’s bright. He can hardly believe this is a simulation. 

“Can I ask you more?” he asks finally, quieter than before. Emiya glances at him, and Mordred feels the need to elaborate. “You know. About… how to be a guy.”

He’s happy, but he also feels a little like he’s in out of his depth. Emiya is quiet for a moment, and Mordred thinks he’s going to refuse. But when he looks over at him, he sees that his dark skin is even darker than usual, a hint of red on his cheeks. 

He’s blushing. Oh, man, that’s adorable. 

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Emiya says finally, and Mordred grins. 

“You’re my guy-senpai, then,” he says brightly, and he gets up so he can slap Emiya on the back. Emiya rolls his eyes, grabbing his shirt off the rail and snapping it at him. 

“You /don’t/ have to call me that,” he groans, and Mordred gives him a shit-eating grin. 

“Take care of me from now on, senpai!”


End file.
